Page 2 of The Poet Empress
A minister, a merchant, a literomancer.
I realized suddenly that Bao was no longer holding my hand. Panicking, I searched the crowded plaza, and was relieved to find him near a stall that sold glazed hawberries on sticks.
When I came to take his arm again, I saw that his eyes were wide with longing. But he was a smart boy. He knew we had no money, and so he did not even ask.
“Would you like a prune?” I asked him in a hushed, secretive voice, as I pulled him away from the vendor.
His eyes went even wider. “You still have some?”
I gave him my best conspiratorial smile and pulled out one of the dried fruits from my pocket. I had saved both of mine for Bao, knowing how he loved sweet things.
Bao made an excited noise and took it. The precise moment he bit into the prune, a gong shuddered through the city square.
Everyone went very still.
Merchants stopped crying their wares, customers stopped haggling, passersby stopped their conversations. Another ring of a gong startled a flock of sparrows into the sky.
And then the voice of a herald: “Prince Guan Isan! Bringer of Spring, Overseer of Feasts, and Third Son of the Azalea House!”
Bao almost dropped his prune in surprise. My own heart was pounding fast. Prince Isan?
It seemed like a dream, like something that only happened long ago and far away. It was unexpected enough that someone from our Imperial House had actually come to give New Year’s Blessings at all. But it wasn’t even just any representative.
It was a seal-bearing son of the emperor himself.
The look of wonder on Bao’s face was as if he’d just found proof that allmagic was real and all promises were true ones. I was so shocked myself that I didn’t even stop to question why a prince hadn’t sent a servant in his place but had come to Guishan in person.
The crowd parted to make way for the procession, and I stumbled stupidly back with them. Bao started to climb me to have a better view, and I helped him to sit on my shoulders. I myself could barely see through the layers of people in front of me, all jostling each other to have a look.
When the procession did come into view, there was no mistaking who they were. They were all dressed in a striking red, a red so true it was almost radiant against the brown of the common people and the gray of the city.
It was not just the color that made them stand out, but the sheerlifethey brought with them. Blossoming green vines crawled over their bodies in place of jewelry, lilies unfurled on their hair and their sleeves, and magnolias bloomed along the swords on their backs.
I felt Bao’s hand pull at my hair. “Look, sister,” he paused sucking on his prune to whisper. “Back there. That’s him, isn’t it?”
A horse-drawn carriage had appeared from behind the gong, surrounded by eight men on either side. It was made of mahogany wood and draped with wisteria and spring briar. The carriage stopped in the middle of the plaza. A bowing servant reached out and pulled the curtain open, and out stepped Prince Isan into the reverent silence.
I did not know what I expected. In the stories, the children of the House were beautiful and valiant, filial and generous. And though I did wonder where the stories came from, and who had a vested interest in telling them so, I did know them all by heart. If I believed the stories, I might have expected Prince Isan to be beautiful.
If I didn’t, I might have expected him to be ugly. The Imperial House was supposed to protect the people from famines. They were supposed to make sure babies were not born small and malnourished and promptly buried. People who were rotten at their hearts, like the sons of the Azalea House, ought to be ugly.
But now that I was seeing him—really seeing him in the flesh—I found that I hadn’t the attention to judge his appearance. I was too busy staring at the House Seal, glowing on his left cheek. It was the only thing I could focus on, and no doubt it was what everyone else was staring at too.
The outer ring of the sigil was circular and bore the flower pattern of the Azalea House. There was a single character inscribed within. I could not read, of course, but everyone in Tensha knew the seals of our imperial sons.
“?/Guo,” a man standing beside me whispered to his wife, and a similar murmur spread through the crowd. “The Ancestors’ word for fruit.”
As if in confirmation, Isan raised his hand.
The earth responded right away. The cracks in the cobble beneath our feet groaned and widened as bushes and vines began unfurling out from the dust-trampled ground. Blackberry bushes, mulberry trees, plump grapes on vines all sprang up from the earth. Branches heavy with pears poured out from under the eaves of a nearby store. Peach trees erupted from the gutters, blossomed, and bore fruit, all in the span of a breath.
Bao squealed in delight, then climbed off me to make a dive for a small haw tree. Around us, everyone else was scrambling to pick fruit of their own.
I helped myself to a peach. As I bit into it, it occurred to me that it was the sweetest thing I had tasted in my entire life. It went into my empty belly like fire filling a cold hearth.
And I started weeping uncontrollably.
I wanted to keep hating Isan. I wanted to keep hating the Azalea House for the years that they never came to give their Blessings, for not stopping the famine that killed Larkspur and four of my other siblings, that might possibly still kill Bao. But I found that I could not. I tried very, very hard to summon hatred, but found myself unable to feel anything at all, except for the taste of peach juice in my mouth.
